
He was the slick salesman of the infamous “Handy-Dandy” vacuum
cleaner on I Love Lucy, and the nasty barkeep, Nick, who pushed
Jimmy Stewart around in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Prior to becoming a multi-Emmy award winning producer and director
of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy
Griffith Show, I Spy, and Gomer Pyle, Sheldon Leonard dazzled
audiences with his sneering schnookiness in westerns like Klondike
Kate (1943), Frontier Gal (1945), and The Iroquois Trail (1950).
